Art: A Museum at Home

This is to certify that Edbury Hatch has served a regular apprenticeship
of more than four years with me in the carving business, that he is
honest, temperate and industrious . . . A lack of business is the only
reason that I do not employ him.

Young Edbury Hatch had just picked the wrong trade. When he was a boy in
Newcastle, Me., the town had supported ten busy shipyards and every new
vessel needed a carved figurehead. But by 1870, when William Southworth
discharged Hatch, business was starting to fall off.